Sarah Austin was one of the first live streaming, life-casters popularized on Justin.TV and she is the founder of Pop17, “a collaborative blogging platform and web show that covers and tracks emerging web trends and tells the stories behind what’s going in social media.” 

Sarah and I have a SXSWi 2011 Panel Proposal with Brandon Prebynski, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh. We’d really appreciate your votes and comments at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob by August 27th, 2010.

Listen to this entire 38th episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Sarah Austin on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio. Some show highlights and quotes are below. Enjoy!

Brands on Social Media

 ”When brands become a part of the community, it really feels like the brand is like your friend. You really love them, like you would a real person. In social media, they take on attributes of people because there are personalitieis behind the brand making tweets, answering questions, customer service, and establishing relationships with people, connecting with people on their interests, and offering something back to the community.” (more…)

Brandon Prebynski is an Emerging / Social Media Strategist at FKQ Advertising and Marketing and the host of a live USTREAM show called Web Trends. Brandon is one of the first people I “met” on Twitter; you can follow him @Prebynski.

Brandon and I have a panel proposal with Sarah Austin, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh for SXSW 2011 so please vote for us at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob before August 27th, 2010!

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Brandon Prebynski on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Brandon recently joined FKQ so I asked him about his new role as a strategist. “It’s been great because within a set of guidelines I’ve been able to shape what the position is,” Brandon told me. He is helping clients create long-term strategies around marketing, customer service and product development.

He’s also been working on tracking, analysis and metrics. “We have this big myth out there that it’s really difficult to measure social media and there are many who say you can’t measure the results especially when it comes back to revenue, and that you can only look at trends over time, but frankly with the correct tools implemented correctly, you can sometimes measure it directly.” (more…)

Big ideas have been essential to advertising since it’s early beginnings, and they are often the subject of great admiration and inspiration. Many have become interested in the process of identifying big ideas, executing them, and measuring their success, but what about the process of coming up with those ideas? Where do big ideas really come from? 

Glenn Griffin and Deb Morrison are the authors of “The Creative Process: Illustrated,” a fantastic book about how advertising’s big ideas are born. They are also university professors and scholars who have built great ad programs; Glenn at SMU, and Deb at UT and the University of Oregon. On the most recent “The Social Nerdia Show!” we talked about creativity, education, the brilliance of Old Spice Man, award shows, BP’s advertisements, and of course, the release of their book, which includes insights from some of the ad industry’s greatest (ie. David Kennedy himself).

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Glenn and Deb on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

While there has been some debate about whether education has an impact on creativity, Glenn’s research as a PHD student showed that there is ”largely a positive and significant influence.” It was as a PHD student that Deborah became Glenn’s mentor and their conversations about the source of creativity, particularly in advertising, is where the idea for the book became implanted in their minds.

The Creative Process: Illustrated

Deb told me that “process matters“ and “process is beautiful” so their book is an exploration of “how people think about thinking.” (more…)

“My whole approach to making this film is similar to open source web development,” said Tan Siok Siok when I asked her about Twittamentary. On the most recent The Social Nerdia Show!, I had a conversation with her to talk about this unique documentary, which she referred to as a “project about Twitter using Twitter to make it happen, and the power of the real-time web.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Siok Siok on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from mobile phones on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming LIVE shows on blogtalkradio.

Siok Siok explained that traditional filmmaking is “very secretive” because it is important to keep the idea away from anyone who could steal it. “What’s unusual about this project is that we crowdsourced it,” she told me. From ideas like a “meetup road trip” to mobilizing people to “generating leades for the shoot,” the Twitter community has made it possible for many to get personally involved. One such example happened in Denver, CO, where Siok Siok’s team was stranded at a bus station at midnight. Someone read her tweets and soonafter picked them up and let them stay with him for the night. “The film shows that Twitter works.” (more…)

I’ve been thinking about the idea of crowdsourcing a lot this year. Last month, I wrote about giffgaff’s unique approach of crowdsourcing not just marketing and R&D, but also customer service. And, for the 33rd and last “The Social Nerdia Show!“ of 2009, I spoke with Robbie Hearn, the Chief of Member Experience at giffgaff to learn more about how this MVNO from the UK operates. Prior to joining company, Robbie was Head of Retention at Be Broadband, a O2/Telefonica subsiduary where he first realized just how powerful it was for a company to have a very engaged community.

Listen to the entire conversation with Robbie on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

giffgaff officially launched on Nov 23rd. “The project as a whole started to take form 9 months ago,” Robbie told me. “It’s gone from nothing to full launch in that period of time, which is very quick for a mobile company.” At first glance one might assume that giffgaff is just a regular MVNO, but giffgaff is truly changing the way a mobile company interacts with its customers.

I asked Robbie to explain what makes giffgaff so unique. ”We see a need and a gap in the market for a new model. We’re what we call people-powered,” he said. “In essence, we’re trying to really leverage all the great new trends and technologies around crowds; we want to engage our members more than any other mobile network in the UK.” Unlike other companies that try to control everything related to their brand, giffgaff lets its ‘members’ interact with the company and with each other online, and allowing them to be part of the company’s “marketing, R&D, and customer service; recruiting members and especially helping answer questions.”

Crowdsourcing Customer Service

Thanks to Wikipedia and companies like Doritos and Starbucks, we’ve all come to know about various forms of crowdsourcing, especially when it comes to marketing and R&D. But crowdsourcing customer service? Now that’s a new idea.

“Crowdsourcing customer service is almost like a misnomer. You don’t need a huge crowd, just a small group that’s absolutely motivated by helping other people; they are the super users,” Robbie told me. ”We don’t have a call center,” he added. “You go online, you type in whatever question you have, and the integrated search identifies an answer based on information giffgaff has submitted as well as information provided by users on the forum.”  (more…)

Becca Taylor is a Social Media Manager at HP’s Enterprise Business, which focuses on servers, storage, business and IT software/services, and other B2B technologies. On the 32nd episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!,” I had a conversation with Becca and she told me about her role at HP, what the company is doing in the social media world, and her thoughts on community, participation, and personal branding.

Listen to the entire conversation with Becca on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

HP is a very large company with over 150,000 employees. “The larger the company gets, often, the more difficult it is to really get authentic social media engagement running,” Becca explained. She added that the benefits of social media in business-to-consumer offerings is much more clear than it is in the B2B realm, but her team is helping change that within HP by identifying the value to the company and its customers.

Her team is called “The Social Media Enablement Team” and consists of 6 people with different roles and in different locations. “Our goal is to work with different teams within the division to get them up to speed on the tools, and most of all, understand from a business perspective that they need to approach social media marketing as they would approach any marketing program, with deliberation, responsibility, and objectves,” Becca said.

Becca has been with HP for 10 years. She actually started at Compaq (which was acquired by HP) doing web documentation. She then transitioned into marketing where she “focused on customer advocacy, on how to best use the internet and various tools to enhance the customer experience.”

About a year ago the Enterprise Business division created a team that focused on social media, and Becca was one of the few who joined the team. “I’m thrilled I did,” she told me, “because I love my job. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.” (more…)